Most paved or concrete roadways in the U.S. are provided with shoulder regions consisting of granular aggregates such as gravel, sand, crushed rock, pebbles, crushed shells, crumbled waste rubber and other such materials or mixtures of materials as are readily available in local areas. After new roads are laid, or old roads refurbished, the road shoulders are laid down and compacted. Most often, this is accomplished using a dump truck to lay the aggregate in a strip next to the road. Then a grader is utilized to spread the aggregate evenly along the side of the road and slightly above the road surface. A compactor is then driven over the aggregate to compact the aggregate level with the road surface at one edge and pitching down and away from the road at the outside edge. The pitching of the aggregate away from the road surface allows for any rain, snow and other debris to flow away from the road surface for vehicle safety reasons. Finally, any aggregate remaining on the road is swept off the road and onto the shoulder.
Over the course of time, existing shoulders are subject to wind, rain, snow plowing, drivers driving on the shoulder and other conditions that cause the shoulders to deteriorate such that the shoulder needs to be repaired. The responsibility for road and shoulder maintenance and repair varies by area. Typically, a city, township or village is responsible for certain roadway areas within their boundaries while the counties and state are responsible for the other roadways and shoulders within the counties and states. The cost for purchasing graders and compactors can run into many hundred of thousands of dollars. For those counties and states that have a larger tax base to draw from, and where those areas have a greater amount of roadways to maintain, that cost may be justified. However, for most cities, townships and villages, those equipment purchasing costs cannot be justified as they only lay down and/or repair three (3) to five (5) miles of shoulder per year. The result is a wide range of alternatives for laying and/or maintaining road shoulders. Some smaller communities contract out the shoulder maintenance work to local contractors on a bidding process. Other villages and townships contract the work out to the county. Not including the cost of the aggregate, which costs between $4.25 and $5.25 per ton of material, the contracted costs, per mile of shoulder, varied between $3200.00 and $6383.00 in a local survey of nearby villages and townships. This amounts to between $9600.00 and $31,915.00 per year in taxpayer expense, depending upon the miles and bidding results. Others areas use their own dump trucks and a crew of employees to hand shovel and level the shoulders. Still others use their own snow plow trucks and snow plow blades to lay and level the shoulders. Neither of which are cost effective or easy to accomplish.
There have been other attempts at road shoulder working apparatus'. U.S. Pat. No. 7,789,587 to James discloses an apparatus for working up existing shoulder aggregate, leveling and then compacting the aggregate. However, any new aggregate material must be laid by a separate piece of equipment and the leveling and compacting device is not adjustable in width. As such, varying conditions, such as differing shoulder widths and mailboxes and roadway signs placed near the roadway cannot be accommodated. U.S. Pat. No. 4,900,185 to Foertsch discloses an asphalt spreader, and, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,612,774 to Dulin, is utilized to spread road shoulder aggregate. However, the '185 patent is also of a fixed width at either of two dimensions. Those being the width of the box if there is no baffle in place, or the distance between the bottom edge of the baffle and a sidewall of the box when the baffle is in place. Furthermore, while the '185 patent allows for straight vertical movement of the apparatus, there is no allowance for any pitch or width adjustment of the shoulder and no allowance for the yaw and vertical rotation of the apparatus relative to the truck when laying asphalt or aggregate. U.S. Pat. No. 4,571,119 to Jones et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 6,089,785 to Bergman have identical problems in that they are not width nor pitch adjustable, nor do they accommodate for any yaw and vertical rotation of the apparatus.